The Life We Chose
by RatherBeAWriter
Summary: A series of drabble like moments, from various seasons, where the agents question why they do the job that they do and how it affects their lives.
1. Emily Prentiss

**A/N: I had this idea a while ago and I finally decided to post it. I plan to write a scene for every character, though some might be a lot more difficult than others. Anyway, I hope you like it and please let me know what you think of the idea or the first chapter. **

**This is set towards the end of season 7 just before Emily leaves. **

Emily was exhausted but somehow she still couldn't sleep. As she lay in the dark room, and her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, she focussed on the shapes and shadows on the plaster of the ceiling and allowed her mind to drift.

She knew she should leave; she'd known it for a while. This wasn't healthy – it wasn't how normal people lived their lives. Normal people didn't spend their lives enduring so much emotional and physical pain.

Battered. Bruised. Damaged.

Her medical records must tell a sad story. How many more concussions and gunshot wounds would it take before someone forced her to walk away? How long before this twisted life choice killed her?

She supposed it had already succeeded in doing that. Twice. And probably a little more than anyone else realised.

"Lauren Reynolds is dead," her own voice echoed. And she knew that more than just an alias had died when all traces of Lauren disappeared. She wondered how much more of herself had withered away in the time that her own name had been etched upon a grave stone. The Emily Prentiss that returned from the dead wasn't quite as whole as the one that had been before.

Not that it mattered in the grand scheme of things. What difference did a little more darkness or scepticism make when you surrounded yourself with the worst of mankind?

The sound of her ringing cellphone broke through the stillness of the room. The familiar name flashed up on the screen and the flutter of anticipation stirred in her stomach.

"Prentiss," she answered, her voice strangely alert given the late hour. Her already active mind only sped up as she listened to the voice of the caller. "I'm on my way."

Another case. Another chance to do the one thing she was certain she could do. Another adrenaline rush. Another chance for more pieces of Emily to break away.

She'd leave eventually – this wasn't home anymore.

But she could never leave the way of life. She'd twist and distort and adapt until she was an entirely different person. Or until she was the sort of dead from which she could not return.

That was the only way she knew how to live. Even if it meant leaving the people she loved behind.


	2. Penelope Garcia

**A/N: Thanks for the reviews, favourites and follows.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Criminal Minds or its characters. **

**This is set after the season 9 finale.**

**/**  
><strong>**

**Penelope Garcia**

"I don't believe in guns."

The words had left her mouth while she was still experiencing the pain of her own bullet wound. But she meant them. And couldn't imagine the day when she would change her mind.

Penelope Garcia was a technical analyst; she was not a federal agent. That was an important distinction because it meant she could put some distance between herself and the horrors of the cases on which she worked. She could sit in her tech cave, as she was just now, and distract herself with the trinkets and colour which surrounded her.

Catching sight of her reflection in one of the monitors, she reached up to fix the fabric flower which was slipping from where she had pinned it in her hair. With the flower back in place, she examined her appearance. The bright lips and the dramatically made up eyes. Her blonde hair and the turquoise frames of her glasses. Did this still project her personality or was it now just a mask? Had the person underneath been irrevocably changed by the long hours she spent waiting for news on victims and killers and friends?

Six years ago she didn't believe in guns; three days ago she'd shot someone.

She'd held the cool piece of metal between her hands and squeezed the trigger. She'd caused that very real bullet to pierce into the body of another human being – just like someone had once done to her. And she hadn't even thought twice.

It had shaken her – she'd felt sick to her stomach as the bullet left the chamber and her ears began to ring. But if she had to, she would do it again, because it meant that Reid was recuperating in his apartment rather than lying on a mortuary slab.

Her colleagues were her family: that was how they survived. And she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she would kill for them. That she could kill for them.

And that terrified her at least as much as the psychopaths whose images and crimes crossed her screens.

Surely it wasn't possible to maintain a disbelief in a weapon that you were willing to use? She wondered what other paradoxes would arise from underneath her confident, carefully painted exterior.

She was no profiler. In fact, she was often glad that she didn't have the same insights into the minds of evil that her friends did. But she knew there were many catalysts which drove a person to hurt another living thing. And all she could hope was that hers would only ever be love.


End file.
